Overview
- A PLOS Medicine study published July 21, 2026 used linked Swedish national registries to follow 2,201,446 women with singleton births from 1973–2015 for up to 46 years and recorded 13,211 peripheral artery disease (PAD) diagnoses.
- Five adverse pregnancy outcomes—gestational diabetes, small for gestational age, preterm delivery, other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and preeclampsia—were each independently tied to higher PAD risk decades later.
- Relative risks varied by complication at 30–46 years after delivery, with gestational diabetes showing the largest increase (~3.8-fold) and the others ranging roughly 1.3–1.7-fold.
- Risk rose when complications accumulated: women with three or more adverse outcomes had about a threefold higher PAD risk, and co-sibling analyses indicated these links were not explained by shared family genetics or upbringing.
- Study strengths include huge size and long follow-up but limits remain, including possible under-ascertainment of PAD before 2001, restricted prenatal covariate data, lack of clinical validation of each PAD case, and uncertain generalizability beyond the Swedish cohort, so authors call for targeted prevention, earlier risk assessment, and further research in diverse populations.